COMMENT

Teaching In English

NO WRITER ATTRIBUTED
February 13, 1922

An educational discovery has been made in England. It is that, inasmuch as all teaching in the schools is in English, all of it may be made the means of teaching English. A bulky report on the general subject has recently been published by the Department of Education. It was prepared by a number of men and women, some of whom are educators and several of whom are writers. They evidently brought fresh minds to their task, and their conclusions and recommendations are singularly unconventional. The chief one is mentioned above. Even lessons in mathematics or science can be, and ought to be, made a medium of instruction in the English language.

The departmenting of studies has had no more unfortunate effect than the too common setting apart of courses in reading and in composition as if they had nothing whatever to do with the rest of schooling. In fact, an insistence upon good usage and clear and correct expression can be made, and be made fruitful, in classes for history, physics or geography.

In the report of the English committee there is much practical sense as well as educational philosophy. If comes cut strongly for humanists studies For "commercial English" if has only quick Gerona remarking that the best thing to do for a boy who means to be a business man is to give him a liberal education. But the great point it makes is that in astute as the vehicle of all education in England is English the opportune for perfecting if some think in the teacher's> work. It is an simple that if seem startling the been way to teach good English is to do all your teaching in good English. --New York Times.